Björn played alone or with his brother for four years before finally joining a band, and just like Christer, he became a member of a group of older musicians when he was 14. They were 3-4 years his seniors, which is a lot when you’re in your early teens. The band was called Moment 22 (which is the Swedish translation of the book title Catch-22) and played punk-reggae with left-wing political lyrics. They played live in the local area and recorded a couple of demos in 1983. But after 18 months, Björn decided to quit the band.
“I wanted to develop my drumming skills towards hard rock and double bass drums. I think they were very sad to see me go. The singer and guitar player, Johan Stridh, wrote a book called Bergsklättraren (The Mountain Climber) a few years later, and although it was fiction, there was a band in the story, and that band was us. It was very obvious. We were given other names of course, but I recognized so many things from real life. The drummer in the book was called Igge, and he too quit the band. The fictional singer then tried to commit suicide, and I felt really bad for Johan.”
Björn has continued to play with musicians who are about his own age or older. The thought has struck him that it might be fun and useful to play with radically younger musicians.
“You probably get a bit stuck in your own generation’s way of playing and the references you have. You always think you’re a lot more broad-minded than others, but I’m a drum teacher and when I work with my students, I can tell that I’m a bit stuck too. I see it in the kind of reference material they bring along, what they listen to and how they play. I think I need more pushes in unexpected directions and different opinions. I don’t get a lot of that. ‘That sounds awesome’ isn’t very challenging or developing.”
Around the time Björn quit Moment 22, he bumped into a guitar player called Jan Myhrén in a record shop in Arvika. He describes him as not just a guitar player, but the guitar player in Arvika and heavily influenced by Eddie van Halen. The pair clicked immediately and started making music together. They found a keyboard player, a bass player and a singer and called the band Six Trixx. So 80’s!
“We wore spandex, tiger patterned tights and make-up! I borrowed drums and cymbals from everyone I knew, so I could have as big a drum kit as possible. I had a lot of fun with them for about three years. During this time, I also played the bass in a band called Doktor Glas, where my brother played the drums.”
Although Björn was a hard rocker and looked the part, he was still a very well-behaved teenager. The closest he came to rebellion was piercing his ears and smoking a cigarette with his brother. When their mother found out that they had tried smoking, she used a well-known aversion therapy trick: Björn and Tony were made to sit down by the kitchen table and smoke an entire cigarette each until they were sick and green in the face.
“I don’t know if that’s the reason, but neither my brother nor I smoked after that. I didn’t have a lot of house rules to follow, and perhaps because I was allowed to look after myself, I didn’t feel the need to misbehave. I didn’t have anything to rebel against. I could sleep over at friends as long as I rang my parents and told them where I was.”
Björn’s parents had a liberal approach to raising their children: openness before discipline, individuality before conformity.
“I think I’ve become structured in practical matters as an adult, because when I grew up, things were pretty disorderly. Nobody really cared if we kept our room tidy and it didn’t matter that much if we changed our socks regularly or not. I keep my album collection in strict order and the same goes for everything to do with my day job as a drum teacher. But I do value the trust they had in us kids.”
That kind of attitude gives children a valuable sense of independence and responsibility. Want smelly socks? No? Well, change them, then. Christer, on the other hand, revolted against everything – especially his step-father – and had good reason for it.
“He was never a good dad; in fact, he’s been a scourge. He criticized everything I did, which made me do it even more. Hard rock and punk has been a blessing for me. I didn’t want to be like everybody else; I wanted people to leave me the fuck alone. My step-father was very judgmental and if you weren’t exactly like him, you weren’t worth anything. And in his eyes, I was worth nothing. He loved the typical Swedish dance band music, so to this day, I can’t stand hearing it. I understand that it has a cultural value to other people, but to me, it’s so damn abominable, because it’s so closely connected to him.”
Björn sees this type of dance music as something more positive, or at least a good school in which to learn to master different genres, but Christer loathes it. Rock, on the other hand, has always been about doing your own thing to Christer.
“Wearing a helmet on stage and doing all sorts of crazy things; that’s not an image, it’s a part of who I am and I get to live that on stage. If I hadn’t had music and the stage, I would probably have ended up in trouble. Once, this other guy planned to rob a van that transported money from cinemas, but on that day, the van never came. Thankfully, that made me realise that criminal life was not for me. That was probably as close as I came, because I’ve always had a fairly good concept of what the consequences of my actions may be. Even when I played punk, we were very serious; we rehearsed and were fairly well-behaved.”
Christer moved back to Gothenburg in 1984, as soon as he had turned 18 and was of legal age. Band-wise, things never really took off for him until he formed Road Ratt in 1988. (He did, however, have a brief career as model for long underpants!) Original members Casper Janebrink (bass) and Tommy Carlsson (drums) left the band quite early on, and formed the incredibly successful dance band Arvingarna, who went on to represent Sweden in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1993. As Christer had an intense dislike for the genre, this added insult to injury. Christer recruited new members, and thanks to winning a band competition in front of 14,000 people, they were able to record a demo, which lead to a record deal.
Three music videos, “Rag Man City”, “Shake it up” and “Itsypooked”, were shot in 1992 by Patric Ullaeus, at the time an unknown director. He is now one of Sweden’s most popular music video directors, and he also shot the video for Freak Kitchen’s “Nobody’s Laughing” ten years later. The album was released in October 1992, and the future looked bright for Christer and Road Ratt. The release party was sponsored by Pizza Hut, and the band appeared on all the major TV channels in Sweden, as well as on radio. They performed at the Zeppelin Awards in 1993 and were interviewed on MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball. A long tour of Sweden followed to promote the album (which is called Resurrection despite the fact that the cover says Real CD2). The hype was enormous, but unfortunately the album sales didn’t match the expectations and the band split up a few years later. For Christer, the brief success had unexpected consequences.
“When we got this huge amount of media attention, I had already cut contact with certain parts of my family. All of a sudden, these people got in touch with me and told me how amazing I was on TV. Up to that point, all they had done was to nag about how worthless I was. My mother and my youngest brother always supported me and believed in me though. But now I was contacted by people who had openly ridiculed me – adults who ridicule children, for goodness’ sake! – and I just wanted to punch them in the face. I truly wanted to beat them severely, and although I could have, that’s not the kind of world I want to live in.”
Christer admits to having a very aggressive side, but surrounds himself with people who don’t stimulate it.
“It’s my life task to keep that demon shackled. But when people who so obviously disliked me before come up to me and say that I was fantastic on TV, all I feel is hate. I told them that it was no fucking use telling me that now. They could have said it back when I was struggling to get out of a black pit of despair five years earlier. I told them they could go to hell. I know that probably hurt them more than if I had assaulted them physically, but it would have felt good. Luckily I had the sense not to. But I do loathe hypocrites! I
have been a hypocrite too at some point, but then I didn’t like myself and had to sort myself out. I like what’s genuine.”
Christer’s future band mate IA Eklundh witnessed this hype and burnout from the front row, having just returned from Denmark to Gothenburg, and it is understandable that IA took the fall of Road Ratt as a lesson for the future. IA even strategically turns down offers.
“There are countries where Freak Kitchen gets so many offers of promotion, I have to say no. And why would I want to turn them down, that sounds insane, right? But I don’t want us to suddenly rise to fame and be the freak of the week; I want us to have a steady crowd of true fans who have discovered us because of their true love of music, and not because of a sneakers commercial.”
While Road Ratt had their moment in the sun, Björn was also packing his bags for a warmer climate: Musicians Institute, Los Angeles.
“When I graduated from upper secondary school, I started working as a drum teacher. I was only 18, so I was pretty young, but it was the right thing for me to do and I’ve been teaching regularly since then. After my year of teaching, I studied jazz drumming for two years at a folk high school. Then, in 1992, I got admitted to the Percussion Institute of Technology at Musicians Institute in L.A. You may think that there’s fierce competition to get into a school like that, but that’s not the case. You have a picture of how you’d have to send in demos where you prove you can play this and that, and that they’d call you in the middle of the night – because obviously they wouldn’t remember the different time zones – and cheerfully tell you that you’d been admitted. But you get admitted if you have the money to pay for your education, and you get a grant and a loan from the Swedish state, so you’re pretty much guaranteed to get in.”
Björn took his studies extremely seriously and seized every opportunity to play with as many different projects and bands the hours in the day would allow for. Every year at MI ends with an award ceremony like the Oscars, where drum manufacturers and companies sponsor different categories. He was nominated in four out of seven categories: Best All-Around Drummer, Best Musicianship, Outstanding Student and Best Jazz Player.
“Out of 120 students, only seven of us won awards, and I won two of them: Best All-Around Drummer and Best Musicianship. The winner for Best Musicianship was voted for by the students themselves, so I was extra proud of that. On top of that, if you wanted to graduate with honors, you had to have an average of 95% on all your tests and examinations, good lecture attendance and you had to have played in front of teachers 25 times. My average was around 99,5% and I had played live 297 times in a year in different bands. So you could say I was qualified. 30 students graduated with honors, and we were invited to try for the special vocational honors. Only ten students dared to do that. We were put in front of a jury, and we had to have one drum solo prepared – the rest we knew nothing about. Highly respected drummers such as Joe Porcaro and Frank Zappa’s drummer Ralph Humphrey gave us sheet music, playing technique and other challenges. Only a German guy called Stefan Spatz and I managed to graduate with vocational honors and that’s a really cool thing to have achieved: it shows that I can manage a vast variety of styles and genres under pressure.”
During his time at MI, Björn also had a rich social life – closely connected to music, of course. One of the people he still keeps in touch with is bassist and portrait painter Angélique Biller from France.
“Björn and I met early in the school year. He was already a great drummer and played in a band called Spicey Spiders which everyone loved. It was obvious to all of us that he would do something with his talent, either in L.A. or back in Sweden. We both stayed in L.A. after the year at MI and I often went to see him play the clubs of the city. As a bass player it was magical to play with him, and because he was so steady and creative he gave the impression that we played well too. MI gave students the opportunity to play together and live passionate lives, and these bonds are still strong. But it has always been special with Björn! We did not just bond over music, we were really friends.”
France is one of Freak Kitchen’s strongholds, and the French fans seem to be extra devoted. In fact, it’s one of those places where IA has turned down offers of promotion. But back in 2000, when Björn told Angélique he had joined Freak Kitchen, she had never heard of the band.
“When I went to see them live, it was completely sold out. That was in Strasbourg, but the same happened in Marseille, and even in a small and remote place like Digne-les-bains. People were obviously eager to see Freak Kitchen live. They are also genuinely nice to their fans, they take time to talk, pose for pictures and sign autographs.”
Although Björn played in several serious bands during his time in the US, he says none of them really had any potential to break big. The aforementioned Spicey Spiders (with an intentional misspelling) played really fast guitar virtuoso music.
“Unfortunately we were three years too late; that kind of music had already had its heyday. I also played in a band called Bombardier, with a female singer who had famous parents in the film industry. She was quite feisty and had grand visions of her future. But I only played with them for six months, because she drove me mental. The rehearsals with her were terrifying, but very developing. I kind of miss getting my ass kicked once in a while. The feeling that we were going to make it big was probably a lot more present when I played with Six Trixx. We recorded a song called ‘Taste of Pleasure’ in January 1986 and it ended up on a compilation LP called Musik Från Arvika. That felt like a colossal achievement to us. We were really young and it was just so cool being in a band, and the feeling that you’re going places is important. But along the way you get in touch with reality.”
Although it’s not what Björn is most well-known for, he has also played with really famous bands and to huge crowds. Guitar fanatics the world over may have heard of The Spotnicks, but it’s very unlikely that anyone outside of Scandinavia has heard about Sven-Ingvars.
“I played with The Spotnicks who have sold 18 million albums and I toured around the world with them. I have also played a summer festival tour with the dance band Sven-Ingvars, and the audiences were around ten thousand people every night. People ask me why I’d play with a band like that because I’m ‘too good a drummer for that’. But people don’t realise it takes certain skills to play that kind of music right. It’s a very specific kind of groove and rhythm, and you have to have knowledge of the genre if a hugely popular band like that is going to choose you as their drummer. The music is meant to be danced to, and if you don’t have the right kind of rhythm, the audience will be dissatisfied.”
Before Björn had turned 30, he already had toured around the world, but didn’t have a set goal in life until he heard IA Eklundh play. He simply focused on wanting to play music for a living.
“I’ve always been very creative and willing to travel; I haven’t been afraid to leave the little village, but followed wherever my calling would take me. And it is a calling! This vocational award I got, it’s all about your calling, and I’ve never had any doubts about what I want to do in life. I’ve always recognized it and been open to all sorts of genres, and I feel that’s important.”
Christer has a similar conviction. He has done many different things through the years, but has come to realise that he is a rock musician first and foremost.
“Playing in Freak Kitchen is demanding, but it’s what I want to do. I wanted to be a guitar playing frontman already when I was six years old and started music school. And I don’t think it’s difficult to figure out why I wanted to be the centre of attention. If you’ve been treated like rubbish and have suffered neglect, you probably get an inner drive to be the focal point.”
Christer explains that he still has a need for affirmation, but that it is much less destructive than it used to be.
“When you’re in constant need of the love, attention and respect of others, you may become someone you don’t like. Perhaps you step on people to get where you want. Relati
onships may fail just because you’re so keen to be seen and appreciated. You may become a very difficult person to be around and to live with, because you’re constantly chasing something you can’t even define yourself. It created a lot of chaos in my life. But I’ve been surrounded by chaos my whole life. If you grow up surrounded by chaos, chaos becomes something familiar. And if you’re living in chaos all the time, you either have to do some sort of drugs to lessen the pain, or you have to work like hell to break the pattern.”
One very serious opportunity for change came when Christer joined Freak Kitchen. It wasn’t about finding a slightly more enjoyable way to earn money, but about working with honest and balanced people with a similar drive.
“It’s strange, but sometimes people talk about Freak Kitchen like we’re a bunch of goofballs, like that’s all we’re about. Yeah, we love having fun together, we love being a positive force. But it’s not more rock ‘n’ roll to be destructive and negative. I’ve tried that, and it’s shit. This is the real deal. I know few people who are as genuine as IA and Björn.”
At this point, the tale of Freak Kitchen takes a slightly different turn. Where the 1980’s and 90’s had been about personal and musical growth together in various constellations, the new millennium was signified by independence and mature attitudes. IA had a shot at a “second marriage”, a clean slate. He didn’t have to be forced into providing his band mates with fame and a social life. When the new line-up went on tour, IA could be fairly sure that although both Björn and Christer loved to party, they would probably not wander off and get beaten up. But when you spend less time together playing pinball and drinking beer in the sun, there are fewer crazy moments to bond over. Christer already had two children and Björn had a fiancé and several other bands, which made it possible for IA to spend time on his own without too much guilt and feelings of neglect.
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